From Serf to Swordmaster, Chapter 23
From Serf to Swordmaster, Chapter 23
The first thing Berak felt when he opened his eyes was a dull ache throughout every muscle.
Berak pushed himself up from the creaking bed. Judging by the angle of the sunlight coming through the window bars, it was nearly noon. He had slept far later than he normally ever could.
'I suppose I did push myself a bit last night.'
The savage hacking he had used to deal with the variant had driven every muscle in his body to its limit, and the aftereffects still lingered.
「Regeneration + 1」
Berak threw on his outer garment and strapped on his sword and axe.
'Where is Dora...?'
There were things he needed to confirm with her. Yesterday he had dealt with quite a number of undead, so had they been replenished by that much? Or would they go deeper and focus on the variants? Depending on that, his preparations before battle could change.
Berak opened the door. The monastery was very quiet. Even though the sounds of the children staying here should have been audible. The sense of wrongness drove the sleep from Berak in an instant. Resting a hand on his axe handle, Berak walked slowly down the corridor.
Before long, he spotted something and relaxed.
Dora's gravelly voice drifted through the wide-open side door of the chapel.
"...So, it's not saying you must help no matter what. God also turns a blind eye in cases like that Victor fellow I mentioned earlier. Instead, it's saying not to turn away at times like this. If you look at this passage here......."
Instead of stepping through the door, Berak leaned against the cold stone wall beside it.
A dozen or so children sat neatly, staring at Dora. Adults who appeared to live nearby were also filling the empty seats of the long benches.
The scene of worship he had suddenly come upon reminded him of his serf days.
The serfs had been required to gather at the village church every week. When they knelt on the cold stone floor, the priest would drone on from the platform in long, tedious words no one could understand.
It had been agonizing: his body was uncomfortable, but the solemn atmosphere made it impossible to move freely.
But the worship here was different from his memories.
For one thing, everyone—adults and children alike—was sitting in chairs. They even shifted around and whispered among themselves.
What Dora was saying was not entirely incomprehensible either. She seemed to be choosing the easiest words possible.
Even so.
'...It's just as boring.'
Berak turned his gaze away. By now, some people had noticed his arrival.
A few people were startled at the sight of Berak carrying weapons, but most of them were adults. The children who had seen him yesterday only glanced at him without surprise. Berak crossed his arms and closed his eyes.
* * *
"All right, that's all for today! Go out and get your bread from Sister Marta!"
Berak opened his eyes at Dora's voice. The adults who had probably come here for the bread passed by Berak first. The children trotted after them.
As Berak approached, Dora, who had been tidying the scriptures on the platform, raised her head.
"If you were here, why were you standing around blankly instead of at least listening to the service?"
"...I did listen. Standing."
Dora's frown showed no sign of believing him. But she did not press the point.
"Wait. I'll close the doors and come back."
Dora closed both the main doors and the side doors of the chapel and locked them firmly.
"Sit. We have a few things to talk about."
As Berak perched on the edge of an empty chair, Dora abruptly held out a pouch.
"This is......."
"It's the payment I posted when I left the request with the guild."
The pouch was large and heavy. Heavier than a big chunk of meat.
"This doesn't look like a single day's worth. Is this an advance payment?"
"Advance payment, my foot. I filled it according to the work done. You finished a week's worth of cleaning in one day, so I should pay it all at once."
"Then the request is finished?"
"Yes. Thanks to you, things should be fine for a while. It'll take some time for the graveyard to fill up again."
Berak stowed the pouch, then asked out of pure curiosity.
"Aren't the undead in the graveyard ultimately the people buried there? But if they keep coming back to life over time even after being dealt with......."
Dora stared at Berak. It was a persistent gaze, as if weighing something. The silence stretched on for quite a while, but the answer that finally came back was brief.
"I'm sorry, but there are circumstances involved that I can't reveal yet. It'll be difficult for me to explain the reason."
Berak nodded as if it did not matter and brought up another topic.
"Understood. But could I be paid in silver coins? I'll cover the difference. As you can see...... it's too cumbersome to carry around."
The weight of 140 copper coins was nothing to Berak. The problem was their bulk. Carrying a lump this size in his clothes would obviously interfere with drawing his weapons or taking a stance.
"I should have three or four silver coins set aside. Come back before you leave."
Having answered, Dora looked Berak over.
"So, is that all? You really have nothing else to say?"
"Nothing."
Dora clicked her tongue.
"Tsk. Even if that was the amount written on the request, didn't you show what you were capable of yesterday? I even heard things would have been difficult without you. And you don't even argue for a little more?"
"Well. I thought that would just be imposing on you......."
"Good grief. You act like a seasoned mercenary, but at times like this you're as naive as your age."
Dora added, as if deliberately lecturing him.
"If you're going to keep doing this work, you should know how vicious mercenaries can be when it comes to claiming their share. Still, I don't dislike that honorable streak of yours that's so unlike a mercenary."
Berak tilted his head slightly. 'Noble,' she said. It wasn't as if he had given up anything he should have claimed.
In the first place, the reason he had come here was not money but personal growth.
But regardless of Berak's thoughts, Dora held out a sheet of paper.
"Here, submit this to the guild. I've added various notes to the request completion signature, so they should properly evaluate your performance as well."
Berak took the document. But Dora's hand did not stop, and she pulled another object from inside her robes.
It was a small pendant with intricate silver gears densely interlocked. It was too crude to be an ornament, yet a strange aura hung about it for a mere component.
Dora hung the pendant around Berak's neck herself. As the cold metal touched between his collarbones, the gears vibrated faintly, as if responding to Berak's heartbeat.
"This is a relic called the 'Chronos Heart.' It won't lend you tremendous power, but it will show you a miracle when you need it most."
Dora looked Berak straight in the eyes and continued.
"This relic currently has no owner. It requires a process of imprinting you as its first owner. Speak the sentence I'm about to tell you with the feeling of driving it deep into your heartbeat. If the relic rejects your pulse, the imprinting will fail. Focus."
An unfamiliar, resonant language flowed from Dora's lips. But Berak instinctively felt it was the same kind as the language he had heard yesterday.
Berak carefully placed the long sentence Dora recited into his mouth. It was a passage mixing unfamiliar movements of the tongue with complex vibrations of the vocal cords.
Repeating it in one go was impossible. His pronunciation broke down several times. His breath mixed into the middle of the sentence. Each time, Dora pressed him with a cool gaze and sounded it out again.
Perhaps it was the fourth attempt. As his heartbeat reached its peak, Berak finally pronounced it correctly in time with the rhythm.
At that instant, a shudder that began at the center of his chest shot up his spine and struck his brain.
Screech!
A grinding screech, as though gears were meshing and turning in a shower of sparks, scraped past his ears. Berak felt the sensation of "another cold heart" being traced directly over his own.
"What you just spoke means 'I bind my pulse to this steel.'"
Dora placed her hand over Berak's chest. Through the cold metal, a vibration in the exact same rhythm as Berak's was transmitted.
"The imprinting seems to have worked. This relic is now connected to your heart. The moment you suffer a blow that would kill you instantly, the relic will shatter in your place and take the death meant for you."
"It takes the death instead?"
"It does nothing for ordinary wounds. Only when you face certain death will it die once in your place. The gears will shatter and forcibly push you back onto the path of life. But only once. After it breaks, the relic becomes an ordinary lump of metal."
Berak tried to gauge the pendant's value. It was single-use, certainly. But a miracle that let someone survive at death's door was priceless.
Even a complete layman could tell that this went far beyond mere payment.
"This is too much. I don't think this is something I should receive as recompense."
At Berak's words, Dora snorted.
"Too much, my foot. If you really feel bad about it, just stop by now and then when you pass through and help clean the graveyard."
Dora tossed out the words and turned her head.
"After all, they'll pile up again over time."
"I'll do that."
Berak answered immediately. He already intended to challenge the graveyard depths, teeming with variants, someday. The offer had no downside for him.
Berak pushed the pendant deep inside his clothes so the gears would not show, and rose from his seat.
Then his gaze abruptly caught on a thick book lying on the platform.
It was the scripture Dora had opened while leading the service earlier.
The rough leather cover was covered with strange figures embossed in gold leaf.
"That book."
Berak's gaze lingered on the unfamiliar symbols engraved on the cover.
"The letters on the cover are strange. I've never seen them before. What country's language are they?"
"Why, were you interested in the scriptures? Earlier during the service you had the most bored expression in the world."
"It wasn't that bad."
Dora gave a derisive chuckle.
"It's the Imperial language. Basic education for all priests."
"If I come back later, could you teach me a little of those letters as well?"
Dora narrowed her eyes as if surprised.
"The Imperial language is not easy to learn. Imitating the pronunciation is one thing; understanding the system behind it is another."
Dora looked straight at Berak.
"Well, if you're confident you can learn it patiently, there's no reason I can't make the time."
Berak bowed his head lightly.
* * *
Berak ate lunch and left the monastery. At the guild, he nearly got into another confrontation the moment he stepped through the entrance.
But this time, the man's companions, horrified, stepped in front of him and held him back. So it never came to a clash.
Only the one who had tried to pick a fight seemed to be seeing Berak for the first time. Seeing that, the big man's claim that "when they see a new face, they test it first" did not seem entirely false.
The receptionist looked back and forth between Berak, who had returned the next day, and the documents he had brought, her mouth falling open.
News of Berak's completed mission quickly spread through the hall via the open counter. Berak showed little reaction to the murmuring about him. The more the rumors spread, the better.
The better his reputation became, the wider the range and quality of requests available to him.
When he returned to the encampment, the sun had not yet set. The training yard in the front courtyard, directly connected to the entrance, was wrapped in an unusual stillness.
In the middle of the yard stood a carriage so splendid it almost looked out of place. Its body was decorated in rich colors and ornate patterns, and even the window frames were densely covered in intricate ornamentation.
The figures surrounding it were clad from head to toe in smooth silver plate armor.
The quality of their armament, gleaming coldly as it reflected the sunlight, and their disciplined posture drew the eye at once.
Above all, what overwhelmed Berak was the presence they exuded. It was not that he sensed any actual energy. But Berak's survival instinct was sending a clear warning.
At his current level, defeating them would be nearly impossible.
The gazes behind the helmets swept over Berak, then returned to the front.
He could be certain even without anyone telling him.
The figures before him were the "knights" he had only heard about in rumors.
The visitors seemed to be waiting for something in perfectly motionless postures, while the mercenaries in the training yard kept their distance, leaving the area around them empty as they went about their own business.
Berak approached one mercenary whose face he knew.
"Oh, Berak. Back already? You said you were going on a mission — did you stop by a hot spring or something? Your complexion's looking great."
The mercenary lowered his voice to a whisper. Berak likewise lowered his voice and asked.
"Who are they?"
For a moment, bewilderment clouded the mercenary's eyes.
"Hey, how can you not know that crest in Hellvern? It's the symbol of House Hellvern."
Berak's gaze followed the man's fingertip. On the side of the carriage and on the knights' breastplates, a golden lion staring straight ahead gleamed fiercely.